Word: spineless
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...tried to please everyone by embracing a loophole that seems to wash Harvard's hands of ROTC while still allowing students to participate in the program. But by stepping around an issue instead of addressing what should be a clear moral decision, it ends up looking foolish and acting spineless...
Though he's careful enough to avoid saying things that could cause a diplomatic embarrassment, he can be winningly unvarnished. When sent to Capitol Hill to explain Washington's spineless policy toward Iraq prior to its invasion of Kuwait, he admitted, "I'm here to defend the policy. It didn't work. When you've got a policy that didn't work, it's not easy to defend." Says Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz: "He always conveys the impression that he's speaking bluntly and candidly, and that goes a long...
...risk-free disruptions over the last several years. From Dartmouth to Stanford, the typical sit-in scenario has run something like this: Angry students occupy some portion of university property, issue a list of nonnegotiable "demands," sing chants and leave in time for the next day's lectures. Spineless administrators have played their part too, often by making concessions or refusing to punish protestors for breaking the rules...
Sweetest Revenge for a Naysayer Marvin Roffman, a gambling-industry analyst, was fired by his spineless firm, Janney Montgomery Scott, after Donald Trump threatened to sue the firm because Roffman predicted the demise of the high roller's $1 billion Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Just eight months later, the Taj agreed to file for bankruptcy protection...
Centuries from now, when anthropologists are examining the Gorbachev era, they will be astounded by the abrupt changes in the forms of political life that occurred during the punctuated evolution of the period. Mute and spineless holdovers from pre-glasnost days slithered into obscurity and were replaced by frothing creatures distinguished by wide-open mouths and fists thrust upward. Two new autobiographies, published this month in vivid counterpoint, provide a revealing glimpse of this great Soviet transition...